Free Republic

Early this week, Oregon governor Kate Brown went on national television to call the Pacific Coast fires a “bellwether for climate change.” As UC Berkeley professor of sustainable development Maximilian Auffhammer writes, “It’s the climate change, stupid.”This is one of four responses to the Pacific Coast fires. Brown and Auffhammer are warmers, people who believe the earth’s climate is changing and the fires must be due to that change. In the warmers’ minds, the fires themselves then become evidence that we need to change our lifestyles to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.A second group are the burners, people who...

The Muslim Brotherhood, a group that was once thought virtually extinct in Syria, has surprised everyone by staging a comeback. The Islamist group is, according to Reuters, a “dominant force” in the Syrian opposition. Similarly, in Egypt, the MB has become perhaps the most powerful group in the wake of the Revolution.This doesn’t sit well with everyone in the American conservative movement, and two factions are vying to define the Republican response to the increased power of political Islam. Leading what might be called the ‘to-hell-with-democracy’ strain of thought is Andrew McCarthy, a national-security columnist for National Review and senior...

Quietly within the foreign-policy machinery of the Obama administration—and quite openly in foreign-policy circles outside it—the idea is taking root that a nuclear Iran is probably inevitable and that the United States and its allies must begin to shift their attention from forestalling the outcome to preparing for its aftermath. According to this line of argument, the failure of the administration’s engagement efforts in 2009, followed by the likely failure of any effective sanctions efforts this year, allows for no other option but the long-term containment and deterrence of Iran, along the lines of the West’s policy toward the Soviet...

In the previous parts to this investigation we've looked at the arguments put forward by both the Alarmists and the Realists. The reason why there's more emphasis on the position of the Alarmists is that the onus is on them to prove their theory. So far they've produced no sound evidence for that nor have they answered their critics.In spite of the failed theory of the 70s when many eminent scientists were predicting that the long-term outlook for the earth's climate was for it to get colder, the pro-case scientists and others cannot come up with any plausible data...

So far we've briefly had a look at the core arguments put forward by the Alarmists - whose who support the theory of man-made global warming - and the Realists - those who, at the moment, don't. However in Australia much of the support for the Alarmists' point of view is based on distorted information, untruths and naked lies.Australia at the mercy of Mother NatureOf all the countries in the western world, Australia is the one that suffers most from the vagaries of the weather. Somewhere, at some time, part of the country is experiencing drought. Never, though, is...

So far we've briefly had a look at the core arguments put forward by the Alarmists - whose who support the theory of man-made global warming - and the Realists - those who, at the moment , don't. However the amount of support and publicity given to the Alarmists is out of proportion to the number of people who actually support their theory.The media has a lot to answer forReading the public comments section of the major media organizations' web sites, the pro-global warming support is at about 1 in three persons, whilst those who are unconvinced by the...

So far we've briefly had a look at the core arguments put forward by the Alarmists - whose who support the theory of man-made global warming - and the Realists - those who, at the moment , don't. The acts of deception by the Alarmists also requires explanation on their part.It's unanimously agreed by the scientific community that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and during that time, it's undergone at least 12, and possibly 14 major periods of climate change. In addition to this there has been numerous minor changes to the earth's climate.Past periods of...

So far in part 1 we've briefly had a look at the core arguments put forward by the Alarmists - whose who support the theory of man-made global warming - and the Realists - those who, at the moment , don't.More accurate data needed before trends can be ascertainedWhat the Alarmists need to do is provide more compelling evidence to support their position. All they rely on at the moment is current data and compare it to climatic events since the 1890s when modern recording of temperatures began.The major problems with this constricted approach are twofold:Firstly, the instruments used...

A must-read debate about our foreign-policy future. Does realism offer the best solutions to today’s threats? Or will neoconservatism be responsible for our policy triumphs? The choice is clear after eight years of failed Bush policies, says Walt, but Muravchik thinks the House of Kristol may well be vindicated. The Future is Neocon Joshua Muravchik TO COMPARE the records of realism and neoconservatism we must first define our terms. Realism consists of two mutually contradictory propositions. One holds that states are bound to behave according to their innate interests. Thus, Hans Morgenthau argued that politics is “governed by objective laws”...

Resistance by partisan ”shadow warriors” at the Department of State has limited the president’s options and is bringing us dangerously close to a military showdown with Iran, former Bush administration official John Bolton told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice initially had planned to provide significant aid to the pro-democracy movement in Iran, as a means of giving the president more policy options, Bolton said. But resistance by the State Department bureaucracy crippled the programs and rendered them ineffective. “[T]he outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow...

WILLIAMSBURG, Va., Sept. 17, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates presented his “realist’s view" of promoting democracy abroad during a speech delivered at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy here today. (Video) Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaks during the World Forum on the Future of Democracy in Williamsburg, Va., Sept. 17, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gates said democratic reform takes time, and to abandon Iraq would be a setback for freedom and stability in the region, and it would not be in the United States’...

“Reality therapy,” declared Time magazine’s Michael Duffy with satisfaction. “A chance to think anew,” added Newsweek’s Jon Meacham. These and similarly warm words of welcome from organs of respectable opinion greeted the December arrival of the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), with its 79 prescriptions for U.S. policy in the Middle East. The sense of relief was palpable. With neoconservatism supposedly repudiated by the “fiasco” of Iraq, the backing of a wise man’s council composed equally of Republicans and Democrats, and a friendly media breeze in its sails, the ISG report was heralded not just as...

Every so often I visit the family crypt of the Wittelsbacher dynasty in Munich's Frauenkirche, to make sure that the former kings of Bavaria are still there. They give every appearance of being dead, but deceased undesirables have a way of showing up at inconvenient moments - for example, former US secretary of state James Baker III. Like King Saul conjuring the spirit of the prophet Samuel, President George W Bush has conjured the undead of his father's administration, namely the Baker-Hamilton "Iraq Study Group". Samuel's ghost told Saul in effect (I Kings 28), "You're toast," and the unfortunate president...

Interesting Times: What the realists don't realize -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saul Singer, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 27, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We can be sure that there was jubilation among political prisoners all over the world as the news inevitably filtered through to them of the gauntlet thrown down to their tormentors by President George W. Bush. We know this, because we know how Natan Sharansky and his fellow inmates celebrated in the Soviet gulag when Ronald Reagan gave his "evil empire" speech. If there is panic, it is among a dominant school in Western foreign policy, the misnamed "realists." Swiftly riding to the...

President Bush's inaugural address has reignited the most basic of foreign policy debates; should American foreign policy include efforts to change the nature of foreign governments? President Bush clearly thinks that the answer to this question is yes, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands".   Condoleeza Rice, Bush's Secretary of State nominee, expressed this idea in a more diplomatic manner during her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing, "We must use American diplomacy to help create a balance of power in the world that favors freedom". Though clearly in line...

Writing in his Diary at NRO, David Frum reports: "The story is going around Washington that Senate Foreign Relations chairman Richard Lugar handed Condoleezza Rice a list of names of 'neocons' he wanted blacklisted from the Department of State and that Rice assented. If the story is true, you can see how it might signal unscrupulous present and former CIA officials to go even further- even to the extent of jeopardizing secret missions." What Frum is referring to in the second passage is the willingness of anti-Bush officials in the USG to leak secret or classified material--in this case about...

Looking back through the cumulonimbi of the years, I still recall how it was de rigueur at my graduate institution (and "vocational school" for the U.S. government, as a fellow student sourly put it)—the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies—to embrace "realism." Not for us was its weepy antithesis, the "liberal paradigm", which was vaguely associated with the odd minority in the Latin America program, or the certified bizarros in Social Change and Development. What is realism, to those who couldn't care less? It is essentially an approach to politics that holds that the interest of the state should...

As some states see red, others feel blue. As we head into this year's presidential contest, we're told that the U.S. electoral map remains split down the middle. That may be--but most new political books address the "red" or Republican side, whether in praise or censure. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's "The Right Nation" does a little of both on the way to explaining why conservative ideas resonate so deeply in our society, driving left-liberals around the bend. Combining statistics, witty anecdotes and useful summaries of the work of other writers, "The Right Nation" is a kind of anthropology of...

<p>As the election debate over Iraq unfolds, we're struck by the role reversal of the two major parties on one of the central questions of U.S. foreign policy. To wit: Is it in America's interest to aggressively promote freedom around the world, or is it generally better to satisfy ourselves with "stability" and the status quo?</p>